Sue Pickering

1 December 2013

John Bradbury

Life Members

Elected 2008

Sue joined the club in 1972 as a junior player and, the following year, as a 15 year old, she was a member of the club’s first women’s team playing in the Wellington Women’s Football Association competition. She was in the 1st team through until 1980.

She joined the club’s Women’s Committee in 1976 for three years, during which time she served as Secretary in 1977.

From 1981, she helped manage one of our junior teams for three years. After producing two sons, Sue returned to playing in 1990 and continued through until 2000. The highlight of her playing career was receiving a Kelly Cup winner’s medal in 1993.

From 1992, Sue was very much involved with fundraising efforts for the Hutt Valley Junior representative teams in which her sons played, and then for the Petone under 19s until 2003. During this time she was meals-coordinator for three years, but she effectively continued her efforts over many years and was a very helpful contributor as recently as at last year’s Napier tournament.

She joined the Supporters’ Club Committee in 1995 and was involved in many of that Committee’s fund raising efforts through until 2006, regularly running meat and cash raffles in the clubrooms after 1st team home games.

She was elected onto the management committee in 1997, and also undertook recording secretary functions at the meetings. She assiduously took minutes of all club management committee meetings and these minutes were normally in our email systems very early the next morning, such was her efficiency. In 2004 the position of Recording Secretary was formalised as a Club officer and Sue was duly elected to that position. She continued in the position until the end of 2009.

Sue has made a huge contribution to the club in a variety of roles which are vastly time-consuming and more often than not involve commitment at times when others are playing, watching or enjoying themselves in the clubrooms. These roles included about ten years of managing and serving in the Tuck Shop; some eight years as Assistant Bar Manager; several years of running and serving in the kitchen in the clubrooms which is essential to retention of our liquor licence; and some years of laundering the 1st team’s strip.

And it didn’t stop there. Sue spent years in helping to cater for our various events and for visiting teams to the clubrooms, running sausage sizzles, providing meals for referees during the Hilton-Petone Tournament, and particularly in generally cleaning up after everyone else.

Sue has selflessly filled so many gaps in the business of keeping our club and clubrooms ticking along that it has always been difficult to imagine what we would have done without her.

Club members recognised her outstanding contribution in awarding her Life Membership in 2008, the first woman in the club to be accorded the honour.

It is pleasing to see that since then she has carried on her efforts over a range of roles, especially in the clubrooms. Wouldn’t it be good to see her being able to sit down for a while, if only people would help by clearing their tables themselves!